Posted
by
Soulskillon Saturday August 20, 2011 @08:24PM
from the opinions-are-like-music-services dept.

jfruhlinger writes with news that Research In Motion will soon jump into the music service market. The service will be available through BlackBerry Messenger, and will offer users 50 songs for $5/month, which they can then share with other people who own BlackBerries.
"So why would anyone pay $5 a month to get 50 songs on their phone, when they can pay $10 a month and get an unlimited number of songs, that work on lots of different devices, from services like Rdio and Rhapsody? Reasonable question! But RIM seems to be assuming that its subscribers won’t ask. Instead it is playing up the notion that BBM Music will be about 'personalizing' your phone, in the same way that ringtones supposedly did a decade ago. Ringtones, as you’ll recall, let buyers play a few seconds of a song, and sold for a couple bucks, while full songs from Apple’s iTunes went for 99 cents. And for a few years, the music companies and the wireless carriers sold lots and lots of ringtones."

I was going to look it up and sarcastically post a link, but it turns out almost every crappy poseur goth or death metal band on the planet has released a song called "Death Knell", so you'll have to choose for yourself...

Probably because it was arrogant and ignorant. 99 cents in 1970 comes out to a lot more than 99 cents does today. Plus that was before most of the income redistribution occurred, when folks had a pension waiting for them at retirement.

For some of us, $.99 for 12 albums - with the obligation to buy just one more during the following year (at a much higher price, of course). I wonder if, or how that model might fly today? Maybe 50 albums for 99c, & buy two more?

It is all just how people market music. It used to be that bands recorded albums and you generally bought albums. There really weren't many distinct "tracks" you put it on your record player and listened to it all the way through (and then played it backwards and listened to satanic messages). Things have slowly changed to track-oriented albums and now to the single. When it first came out, of course paying 99 cents for a song was a deal because music was usually offered only as a full CD, but there were on

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

99 cents for a song isn't extortion. At worst, it's a price somewhat higher than you'd like it to be. The fact that you have the ability to take something without paying doesn't mean that someone is extorting you by asking that you give them a dollar as a reward for their hard work.

I guess that's why buying the full album is usually couple bucks cheaper than it would be to buy each song individually. (I'm checking ITMS for this; not sure about other stores.) I agree, though--it feels like prices should be lower, since there's no physical media involved. Unlike many here, however, I don't mind companies having profit margins. Making songs cost 1c would be unprofitable--which means a lot less would be made (okay, that might actually be a good thing, but I digress).

$12 for the physical CD was almost always way too much. With *some* exceptions (The Beatles and a few other big bands), you couldn't get them, but the vast vast majority of my 300+ CDs were from CD clubs, and I averaged under $6 apiece, including the ridiculous "shipping" charge. (Other big bands, like U2, weren't exceptions, and I got them through CD clubs.)

Unfortunately, BMG closed down and sort of turned into yourmusic.com, which also just closed down. Though I have I think around 200 free song codes

Someone wrote, performed, and recorded a song. If you would like to be able to listen to their work whenever you want, pay $0.99 for it (which is 1/2 of the cost of a fricking cup of coffee these days, and that will last you about an hour until you pee it out).

Did they force you to download it and now demand money or they will break your fingers? No? Then it's not extortion.

I don't get why people complain about this stuff so much. It's a completely elective entertainment expense, you decide if it's worth it and either buy it or don't...

So you listen constantly to music you don't like? Maybe you should just turn the speakers off and save yourself the money(if you're actually paying anthing int the first place). Car analogy time. Imagine renting Yugos over and over again, just hoping that you will accidentally get a DB Vanquish. Save your time and just buy music you like and if you just think you like music but in reality do not then stop listening to music.

This is exactly what I need! More DRM'd music stores which most likely won't even have many of the bands I listen to! And not only are these DRM'd in the fact I have to listen to them in a cross-platform player but instead I have to stick to the same brand of phone! Sounds like one great deal to me!

While I think that this plan is sheer insanity on their part, given how utterly sucky it is compared with ITMS, Amazon, Pandora, etc. it sounds eerily like something that somebody who thinks that the historical success of BlackBerry Messenger is broadly applicable would come up with...

BBM is also BlackBerry only(to send or receive) and is pretty much just another IM service(the encryption helped sell it on the suit side; but the consumer market doesn't much care). I imagine that some of their higher-ups

This is exactly what I need! More DRM'd music stores which most likely won't even have many of the bands I listen to! And not only are these DRM'd in the fact I have to listen to them in a cross-platform player but instead I have to stick to the same brand of phone! Sounds like one great deal to me!

You do realize, of course, that the two biggest music stores, iTunes and Amazon, have not had DRM for years now, right?

If I had to pinpoint one comic as the point "everybody" started reading it, I'd point to 214 - The Problem with Wikipedia [xkcd.com]. Somewhere in that general vicinity is when xkcd really hit its stride, and popularity followed shortly after.

"What about this.""We're RIM. You want this.""No. Seriously. What about this?"We're RIM. You want this."

Newsflash RIM. You've been resting on the fact that you were a big dog in the early professional mobile market. That's not going to save you. It's the only reason you haven't bailed from the market already. It's not going to slow your plummet anymore.

So get back to work and FOR FUCK'S SAKE...INNOVATE. Otherwise, take your place along other relics such as Microsoft Bob. The Lisa. The Osborne 2. Get the picture?

Yeah, they've totally been sitting on their thumbs. It's not like they've spent the past two years buying up talent, updating their OS, and putting together a slick line of new products and revamping their development tools making it easier than ever to write software for BB smart phones and tablets.

Oh, wait, they totally did all of that.

And, hey, let's face it -- the Bold 9900 really makes it really hard to wait for QNX line up.

This isn't aimed at the corporate blackberry users. BBM is the new pager (remember those?) - the messaging of choice for low class drug dealers and their customers. Think the London Rioters. They loooove them some BBM, and might go for $5/mo for 50 songs, which is 10 more than you need for the top 40 regurgitated R&B hits.

This is a very bad deal for anyone who would actually read slashdot, but I can't say it's completely a horrible idea for RIM.

It's all about the convenience. Torrenting is far too complex and too much hassle. I've seen some of the interviews, and they're hard pressed to operate their phones, much less uTorrent. This is $5, no hassle.

Torrent?
I have had paid accounts with Slacker Radio and Grooveshark for months, and I dont torrent anything. Why bother with managing storage and tagging of music on a device when I can listen to (almost) anything that I ever wanted to for less than $15US per month?
RIM is just foolish, and I say that as a (mandatory) BB user...
I am just waiting for the day that my company wakes the ____ up and ditches BB for a mobile computing device that I dont have to reboot every 2 days... it sucks.
So, forgive the ra

This could also be a very bad deal for any 3rd party developer who wants to make a music application, or a music-related app, on Blackberry. Will RIM decide to one day block your app because it could tangentially compete with their app?

This might work given the audience (...) This isn't aimed at the corporate blackberry users. BBM is the new pager (remember those?) - the messaging of choice for low class drug dealers and their customers.

Actually I was thinking it the other way around, that it could work in the corporate market so that RIM could say that they do have a music service, even if it sucks. I didn't even know BlackBerry had non-corporate customers, I've never seen anyone else with one - ever.

RIM have somewhere near 40% of the youth market in the United Kingdom. Anecdotally, BlackBerry phones are quite popular for people who need functional smartphones for very cheap prices (I have a BlackBerry Curve 3G, which you can currently get for Â£10 a month) and BBM is considered a killer app for them given that it costs absolutely nothing and so is a godsend for those on pay as you go (prepay) tariffs.

Of course they're also still popular with corporate types. But they have a strong foothold i

"...Ringtones, as you’ll recall, let buyers play a few seconds of a song, and sold for a couple bucks, while full songs from Apple’s iTunes went for 99 cents. And for a few years, the music companies and the wireless carriers sold lots and lots of ringtones."

So evil Apple constructing a mechanism that allowed users to legally license songs for a buck, instead of simply using the music for free. Many complained that Apple users were still stealing music even though they were paying instead of

Then evil Apple created a phone that ultimately allowed users to bypass the phone companies and load music and trivially create and load custom ringtones at no charge and browse the web without telco interference.

Huh? Try again.

First, if you wanted to add a ringtone to your phone, you had to buy the complete track from the iTunes Store for 99 cents. Then you were allowed to edit that song and send it to your phone as a ringtone for an additional 99 cents. Total charge: $1.98.

Then evil Apple created a phone that ultimately allowed users to bypass the phone companies and load music and trivially create and load custom ringtones at no charge and browse the web without telco interference.

Like I could do with my blackberry and various dumb-phones *years* before that?

Damn those time travelers, always stealing Apples ideas before they have them!

Let's do some math, based on my personal collection. I have 7,677 songs, only a small minority of which (~400) are Creative Commons or public domain. If I were to rent those from RIM, that would be... $770 per month. Even by RIAA standards, that's extortionate.But, you say, I don't actually listen to all those songs. You're probably right. Let's trim out the ones I gave 1 or 2 star ratings (my entire collection is methodically tagged), the ones I only have because they came on an album with other songs, or even just to complete an artist's collection. That cuts things down to 6254 songs, or $630. Still way too high.Again, you repeat, I probably don't listen to all of those in one month. In fact, so far this month I have listened to a mere 727 songs. Adjust for the length of the month, and that comes out to 1090 songs/month, or $110. Which is still too much for me to pay, but maybe someone will. Sucker born every minute and all that.So let's say I only rent my very favorite songs, the one's I've given the full five-star rating. That's 70 songs (I'm very conservative with that rating), two of which are CC-licensed, and one more that is copyrighted but not available for sale. Still, that would be $10 a month, for my favorite songs and a few variations each month. Which isn't competitive with other streaming services, and isn't even really competitive with buying permanently from any popular store - those 70 songs would cost ~$70-100 to own forever, or a few month's worth of streaming.

How much of that $770 would get passed on to the performers or writers? With some operations (mostly ring tones) that answer was $0 and assuming this bunch are going to be honest it's probably still going to be a single digit. There's a very good reason why the music industry looks a lot like organised crime and that's due to some of the same players being involved in both. Buy those CDs at the merch table after the show or off the performers web sites, it's the only way performers are going to get a dec

Cool story. What you are talking about isn't even an OPTION. Furthermore, it sounds like you plan on listening to 7k songs each month, so I don't know why you would be worrying about money at all when you can hang around and listen to multiple songs at once all day every day.
$5 a month is very little to pay, especially when you consider that if you aren't a fucking sap you can still download songs you plan on keeping.

Sure. I mainly listen to video game soundtracks, so it may not be your thing, but I really enjoyed "Terra in Black" [ocremix.org] and "The Might of Baron" [ocremix.org], both remixes of Final Fantasy songs (VI and IV, respectively). That whole site's pretty good, actually - they got contracted to do the soundtrack for Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix, which was cool.

Although, I just checked, and it's not actually Creative Commons. The license is basically CC-BY-NC-ND, though, so it's still completely free to download and redist

Because of how damn good a PHONE it is. Great call quality, great reception, the speakerphone is fantastically clear... it's essentially as good as a land-line at making phone calls in terms of audio quality. And the OS doesn't get in the way of the phone functioning as a phone. In fact, it encourages it.

That's actually what some people want. Not everybody wants tonnes of apps and games.

echo RIM are confused by the marketecho RIM don't know what to produceecho RIM think that everybody likes Blackberry'secho RIM can't accept that you would prefer another mobile#!C/* A poem in the key of C */#include "staff.h"#include "key.h"#include "tempo.h"#define poem RIMisRIMa poem() {
RIM is RIM not Rim nor rim
tis why we stick them in//the-bin.
but/bin is where our binaries go
so where to put-it do we// know?}#!/bin/bash

RIM is laying off a fair amount of their workforce.
Coming up with the worst ideas possible.
The tablet is crap, the phones are old tech and horrible.
This is their newest idea?
The future for RIM looks bleak.
Hell I can use subsonic and stream my whole music library to my phone or any web browser for nothing.

Just off the top of my head...RIM and Verizon release the Storm as an answer to the iPhone. It sucked horribly, three generations of horrible in comparison.Moto and Verizon come along a shakes the entire industry with the Droid.Samsung joins the party with the Galaxy, HTC with the Incredible and EVO. Moto, HTC and Sammy continue to iterate better performing products.Meanwhile RIM tries to answer this with the Torch in the same epic manner of fail as the Storm.Moto, Sammy, HTC, LG, hell even Huawei and Sanyo

Hrmm.. I pay $10/m for my rdio.com subscription ($5/m for the service + $5/m for letting it play on my phone) for millions of songs. Or, I could give Apple/HTC/Microsoft/Samsung/Sony/Amazon/$ANY_OTHER_COMPANY $5 and get only 50. Nope, it sounds stupid no matter which company you use.

Some artists have different ideas about that.In the days of vinyl and also cassette tapes, a song could be around 22 and a half minutes. (and an album would be divided into 2 parts, (eg Hergest Ridge) or a double album could be 4 parts (Incantations)

Then CD's came along and a 'song' could be up to 74 minutes (something to do with one of Beethovens symphonies)

I don't have any songs that long, but I do have one nearly an hour long (Amarok)

So I don't mind paying just under $10 per hour of music as long as I can move it to other devices, and listen to it as many times as I want. But I won't pay to just 'rent' music.

Sheesh. For people for whom this matters, I think they'll do one of two things:

1. Look at RIM's offerings, and look at spotify (which isn't available for BB phones). A spotify phone is going to win out.

2. Buy a BB, without knowing about spotify. Eventually, they'll run into someone with a spotify-capable phone, at which point they'll probably feel like a ginormous "L" has been stamped on their forehead. That should help future BB sales. Not.

Yep. The most important consideration when buying a phone is the ability to stream music. It's not like there aren't *hundreds* of other music streaming apps available for blackberry phones, including popular services like pandora and grooveshark.

Besides, music streaming services are a huge waste on a phone. Someday, you'll run across someone with an MP3 player and you'll probably feel like a ginormous "L" has been stamped on your forehead.

When I had a Blackberry, I was astounded at how there were almost no apps, how terrible the browser was, the low build quality (three clit transplants in two years? really?), and how horribly obtuse configuring just about anything with it was.

The only thing it had over the iPhone and Android? The bill went to my employer. When policy changed and that was no longer the case, there was no possibility I'd ever touch RIM again.

Except that Steve Jobs publicly said that Apple would use non-DRM'ed music in February 6, 2007 and Apple offered EMI tracks in non-DRM'ed format starting May 29, 2007. Amazon didn't launch the public beta of their store until September 25, 2007 and it went live January 2008. I can't see how at least several months before Amazon == after.

Except that the copyright law gives copyright holders the ability to add DRM if they wish. In the case of music companies, that is what they wanted having been caught off guard by the rise of Napster. Apple wanting to sell digital music had to come up with a system to their liking. It wasn't until that the music companies realized Apple had become powerful because of the DRM that they relinquished.

Apple didn't sell the first non-DRMed music. Apple didn't even exist when the first non-DRMed music was sold. In point of fact, non-DRM music was sold for nearly a hundred years before there even was such a thing as digital encoded music, much less the digital rights management to protect it.

Selling music dates back to Edison's recorded cylinders in the late 1800s and there was certainly no digital rights management embedded in the wax cylinders. Selling non-DRMed music is not a new thing.

Apple didn't sell the first non-DRMed music. Apple didn't even exist when the first non-DRMed music was sold. In point of fact, non-DRM music was sold for nearly a hundred years before there even was such a thing as digital encoded music, much less the digital rights management to protect it.

My point if it wasn't clear is if you want to sell digital downloadable music is that you have to get permission of the copyright holders. See In this case, the music companies would not allow Apple nor anyone to do so without DRM. Copyright Law says the copyright holder controls the distribution of their works and DRM was their stipulation. It was the same requirement for MS in their PlaysForSure, Apple in FairPlay, etc. Now if Apple wanted to sell physical CDs online then they didn't need to any DR

That isn't Apple's model. That is the normal way of buying music that Apple only adopted after facing pressure from the community and competition from Amazon and others.

Spin history [archive.org] any way you want. The truth is, Jobs penned his famous "Open Letter" a full year before [wikipedia.org] Amazon opened Amazon MP3. It just took Jobs a little longer to work out the details and hammer out the details, since they had a lot more deals with a lot more labels, already in place.

Yep, you're right. I've just had my fill of combative statements. "Im going to assume you're a clueless moron, make a statement built on that premise, and even if you prove yourself I'll stick with it until the end."

I would consider buying this as long as the selection is good enough. There are plenty of times I have wanted to listen to a certain song and was away from my pc or it was a song I did not have. 10 cents is not a bad price for this.

You might want to look into Rhapsody or Napster. I have accounts with both and they each have their pros and cons. I think Rhapsody's player, iPhone support, and search engine are better, but I like that Napster also gives you MP3 credits so you get song downloads, too.

To be honest, the most appealing thing about the music subscription for me (besides the instant access to virtually everything) is that I don't have to maintain a multi-gig collection of files anywhere. That's not for everybody but I fly

It was almost pure profit since in nearly every case the performers/composers got nothing. Only a few dozen suckers and they'd got all their money back from sampling or doing it in midi. It's like spam, the cost of getting it out there is low so they only need to find a few suckers to make it worth it.